OUR VIEW: Wake up call for school districts

Wednesday

Jun 21, 2017 at 9:00 AM

A group of activists recently converged on the State House to get the governor and Legislature behind a proposal to move the start time of Massachusetts public high and middle schools to 8:30 a.m. at the earliest. Many now start by 7:30 a.m.

Both the American Pediatric Association and the American Medical Association support this later start time based on data that recommends teenagers get 8-1/2 to 9-1/2 hours of sleep every night in order to adequately perform physically and mentally.

Similar proposals have been debated at the district level in schools across the nation, including several school districts on the South Shore.

In fact Hingham High School was well ahead of the curve, moving from a 7:20 a.m. to 8 a.m. start time back in 2003. Hanover High School was the most recent school district to move to a later start time by a half-hour, from 7:25 a.m. to 7:55 a.m.

Pembroke has actually gone the other way, starting not only high school, but the four other schools in the public school district earlier in the upcoming school year and extending the school day a little longer on the other end. Pembroke High School will begin at 7:30 a.m. next year, 10 minutes earlier than the current 7:40 a.m. start, and end 12 minutes later at 2:10 p.m. School officials there are looking to extend the school day to give students and teachers more time together.

The few districts locally and nationwide that have made the move to a later start time have found that it has cut down on tardiness, truancy and dropout rates.

A 2014 University of Minnesota study found that in addition to improved behavior in classrooms, car crashes involving teens dropped when the school start time was moved. As far as academic performance, anecdotal and hard data shows a mix of improvement and no changes.

But many districts simply don’t want to deal with the headaches that come with change, or fear such change could come with a financial cost. When start times are adjusted, school bus schedules also have to change, there would be disruption for parents who need to get to work at a certain time and after-school sports and other extracurricular activities would also be impacted.

While it may be difficult to get to the desired high school start time of 8:30 a.m. or later for public school systems, we recommend all school districts examine the extensive research on teen sleep and productivity and achievement with a later start time for high schools, as well as the local results from those who have already made the leap.

And while we support the concept of later start times for high schools specifically, we do not support the idea of the state in this particular situation telling individual communities what to do. Districts are already dealing with too many unfunded mandates.